Sky Sports Cricket podcast<\/a>. <\/p>\n\u201cA lot of this is our fault. It has always been about putting bowlers under pressure, soaking up pressure, but we have not done that well enough, whether against India in the summer or now.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrendon\u2019s record as a coach is excellent. When you compare him to other coaches, we haven\u2019t won the big series, but will we have to evolve, adapt, change and become better at all these things we are talking about? Of course we will.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo I think he\u2019s the man to do that? If he\u2019s as prepared as I am to do it, he is the right man. Brendon is a resilient character. There is nothing I\u2019ve seen from him that suggests he doesn\u2019t want to.\u201d<\/p>\n
ECB responds to drinking culture claims | 01:53<\/p>\n
To illustrate his point, Key said there were no fractures inside the England dressing room and credited that to McCullum\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you get these tours, when you\u2019re losing in Australia in an Ashes series, half the team don\u2019t like the captain and the other half don\u2019t like the coach – that\u2019s not happening at all on this trip,\u2019 he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey have kept the players together remarkably well considering everything that has gone on. But will we have to evolve? Absolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCullum\u2019s predecessor, Chris Silverwood, did not survive a 4-0 defeat four years ago and Key later conceded that an Ashes whitewash would likely leave the English Cricket Board with no choice but the undergo a complete review, which he added would put everyone \u2014 including himself \u2014 under scrutiny. <\/p>\n
One of the more contentious aspects of this Ashes series had been England\u2019s preparation and Key acknowledged some self-reflection was necessary there, although that came with one key distinction. <\/p>\n
Aussies facing Ashes selection dilemma | 02:51<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a difference between planning and getting it wrong,\u201d Key said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea that we didn\u2019t care about preparation is not true. Clearly it didn\u2019t work, so it\u2019s hard to argue it was right, but I\u2019ll explain the reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a T20 and white\u2011ball series in New Zealand, and it was very important that everyone knew what team this was, what we were about, how we prepared – that nothing was different and we would prepare just as we would anywhere. But it didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went to Lilac Hill knowing the conditions weren\u2019t going to replicate what we\u2019d face, but there is nowhere other than the WACA or Optus Stadium that can replicate those conditions. That was the thinking behind it. We felt it would be sufficient to be ready for that Test match, but it didn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England cricket chief Rob Key has thrown his support behind embattled coach Brendon McCullum, while making a key…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-367799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n